From vu2gmc@navier.ucsb.edu Sat Feb 18 22:03:41 1995
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From: vu2gmc@navier.ucsb.edu (Sitaram Ramaswamy)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics.gnuplot
Subject: Re: How to make movies on gnuplot?
Date: 18 Feb 1995 05:17:54 GMT
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Bernhard Reiter (breiter@briseis.mathematik.Uni-Osnabrueck.DE) wrote:
> In article <3hh6m0$ecp@serv.hinet.net>, chiao@hntp2.hinet.net (chiao) writes:
> |> 
> |> Is there any one knows how to make movies on gnuplot?
> |>For some reason,I need to investigate the vibration of a certian 3D structure.

There is a suite of programs called ImageMagick (check comp.archives
for a recent posting regarding it) and the author is 
John Cristy, (E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company Incorporated) 
A possible site could export.x.org in the contrib directory

It's a wonderful FreeDist tool for image display, manipulation, 
conversion-to-other-formats, morphing (basic), AND 
animate(ing) a set of images.
^^^^^^^^^^^

It will be worth the the exercise if you choose to get it. It's
X11 specific so if you are on a Mac/PC set up this might not 
be for you though you can check it up.  

In addition to supporting it's own image format (MIFF),
it also supports (conversion to and from) the following formats 

  ALPHA Raw alpha bytes.
  AVS   AVS X image file.
  BMP   Microsoft Windows bitmap image file.
  CMYK  Raw cyan, magenta, yellow, and black bytes.
  EPS   Adobe Encapsulated PostScript file.
  FAX   Group 3.
  FITS  Flexible Image Transport System.
  GIF   Compuserve Graphics image file.
  GRAY  Raw gray bytes.
  HISTOGRAM
  IRIS  SGI RGB image file.
  JPEG
  MIFF  Magick image file format.
  MTV
  PCD   Photo CD.
  PCX   ZSoft IBM PC Paintbrush file.
  PICT  Apple Macintosh QuickDraw/PICT file.
  PNM   Portable bitmap.
  PS    Adobe PostScript file.
  PS2   Adobe Level II PostScript file.
  RGB   Raw red, green, and blue bytes.
  RLE   Utah Run length encoded image file; read only.
  SUN   SUN Rasterfile.
  TEXT  raw text file; read only.
  TGA   Truevision Targa image file.
  TIFF  Tagged Image File Format.
  VICAR read only.
  VIFF  Khoros Visualization image file.
  X     select image from X server screen.
  XC    constant image of X server color.
  XBM   X11 bitmap file.
  XPM   X11 pixmap file.
  XWD   X Window System window dump image file.
  YUV   Raw Y, U, and V bytes.  U and V, normally -0.5 through
        0.5, are normalized to the range 0 through 255 to fit
        within a byte.

So you can dump you gnuplot output to a set of images and then 
combine them to make a movie using ImageMagick tools. 

I assume you already know how to generate 'gif' or 'pbm' images
using gnuplot and can automate the process. In case you don't 
drop me a note. 

I am not associated with ImageMagick in any way, but I think
this is an excellent suite of image manipulation programs.
If you check it out and like it, be sure to drop the author 
a note thanking him for the effort that he's put into it.
 
-Ram
-vu2gmc@squid.ucsb.edu